1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to tracking targets for situational awareness, and more particularly to ground moving target indicator analysis.
2. Technical Background
For most of the last century and continuing on to the present era, the times have been marked by a continual succession of wars, insurgencies, terrorism and other such acts of violence. One of the issues routinely encountered by military and law enforcement decision makers relates to the availability (or unavailability) of concrete and actionable intelligence. These decision makers need to know who the enemy is, where the enemy is, what his numbers are, and how he is arrayed before they can counter him effectively. In order to substantially lift the fog of war, the military performs intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations to obtain the information outlined above. In many cases, ISR operations are augmented by target acquisition operations prior to destroying an identified threat.
During a typical ISR operation, raw information is collected from various sensors that are deployed on the battlefield and passed to ISR analysts for processing. Because the ISR analyst may be monitoring many different sensors, he is often overwhelmed by the vast amount of data that pours in. This data my include radar data, human intelligence data, electro-magnetic emission data, video and the like. In a perfect world, an individual analyst would be able to sort through the individual pieces and assemble them into a coherent picture that can be used by the decision makers. The reality is far different. Often, much of the data collected by ISR sensors are wasted because of the time constraints of a live situation; the typical ISR operator does not have the ability to process all of this information in a timely way.
One reason for the limited effectiveness of conventional ISR operations relates to the limited number of adequately trained intelligence analysts. The supply is limited because there are relatively high costs associated with training ISR personnel. Moreover, the skillsets of the trained ISR analysts are not uniform and can vary a great deal from person to person. The aforementioned issues are further complicated by the fact that many surveillance missions are continuously operational, i.e., the ISR shop is open twenty-four (24) hours a day, seven (7) days a week. This demanding schedule requires the availability of at least one ISR analyst around the clock. Accordingly, analyst fatigue and lack of alertness can seriously impact the effectiveness of any ISR operation.
One tool that promises to transform ISR operations is ground moving target indicator (GMTI) radar. GMTI radar has a unique ability to distinguish targets moving on land or water from surface clutter in bad weather or in darkness by virtue of the Doppler radar return of the moving targets. Thus, GMTI radar can detect the movement of enemy forces in real time, or in near-real time, throughout a surveillance area in any kind of weather.
One drawback to this approach is that airborne GMTI radar systems preforming surveillance can produce thousands of radar detections per minute. While the radar detection data can be formed into “tracks” by existing electronics, the radar tracks must be interpreted by a trained intelligence analyst. In particular, the ISR analyst must observe the radar tracks, and attempt to understand and identify the surveilled area's normal traffic patterns in a short period of time. Only after the operator understands the “normal” traffic flow can he distinguish an abnormal event. Obviously, observational learning and analysis like this is time-consuming, highly subjective and therefore requires substantial operator training. Furthermore, analyst fatigue, shift changes and rotation of personnel causes uneven knowledge of complex traffic patterns.
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method for automating and integrating the intelligence gathering process to improve a decision maker's situational awareness. A system and method are needed that substantially advance GMTI radar ISR by fully automating data exploitation and reduction to provide the warfighter with timely situational awareness (e.g., traffic pattern analysis). A system that automates ISR data mining is also needed to uncover new enemy activity patterns. Finally, an automated ISR system is needed for interfacing cloud based databases to provide worldwide automated ISR data extraction and reduction.